Nicotinamide phosphoribosyl-transferases (NAMPT) are enzymes that play a role in targeting cancer metabolism, while beta lactamases are involved in bacterial resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics. Many protein inhibitors exhibit such property which is often correlated with their cellular potency. In order to understand such a phenomenon, the present article conducts an analysis of the dynamic behavior of complexes formed by the inhibitors, that is indolizine derivatives, with the studied enzymes. Both docking and molecular dynamics led to identification of their interactions and showed the mechanism of inhibition of the two studied enzymes. The differences in the behavior of ligand at the active sites of beta lactamases and nicotinamide phosphoribosyl-transferases are indicated by structural and enthalpy values.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00894-017-3363-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.